“Did Jeri know you were going to do this?”
“Yes.”
“She never said anything to me.”
“I’m not surprised. She would have wanted you to make your own call.”
I thought about it. To go out to Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti and who knew where else. Magnificent. Given our sleep capability, we could leave tonight and arrive in the morning. Better than that, really. We could start with Barnard’s Star. Then refuel and move on.
I could not have seriously considered doing it had Morris still been there. But they’d betrayed him. “You know they’ve removed Denny Calkin,” I said. “One of Ferguson’s political buddies is in charge now.”
“Well, that’s the tradition,” she said. “You know Calkin was a political appointment, too.”
“Yes. I know.” She was silent. “Well,” I continued, “I’m sorry about Jeri. But I’m on board. Give me a chance to find some fuel and I’ll be ready to go.”
“There’s no hurry, Sara. And no need to feel badly about Jeri. When you don’t report in, they’ll send her out here. Then we can all go.”
“You really think they’d do that? After losing the first two ships?”
“Sure. They won’t be able to resist. Everybody loves a good mystery.”
LESSER BEINGS
Charles E. Gannon
Charles E. Gannon is not only a talented science fiction writer but also a Distinguished Professor of English (the collection’s second English teacher) at St. Bonaventure University and a Fulbright Senior Specialist. He has been published in Analog, has written for the Traveler and 2300 AD games and recently collaborated with Steve White on the book Extremis (also from Baen).
Traversing interstellar distances is daunting and will require tremendous resources and willpower to accomplish. As you will see in Lesser Beings, the vast distance between the stars might be a good thing indeed!
— 1 —
There was no time to react. A fire team of Veronite helots popped up from beneath the sagging hulk of a smoldering tank and, in the same motion, fired a rocket at the third vehicle in the command echelon. The white gush of the weapon’s lateral plume pushed it across the intervening fifty meters with a loud, bristling hiss—and the world seemed to jump along with the vehicle the rocket had struck. A sharp flash preceded the deafening fireball and consumed the armored car, the car’s small turret humping up and then off its deck, tumbling to the side like a child’s toy. The pennant on its aerial—that of the Lord General himself—fluttered in seeming desperation before crisping in the flash.
The cacophony did not subside; it only changed. The remaining three armored cars’ twenty-six-millimeter autocannons blasted converging streams of tracers at the helots. The nearby dirt churned up in black and brown gouts. Bright flashes and metallic shrieks marked where near-misses struck the crippled tank’s chassis, roadwheels, treads. And, fleetingly, limbs and sundered torsos tumbled apart through a thin bloody mist that was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
And then silence. But only for a moment.
The HQ troop’s two APCs—one creaking fearfully—arrived, swerving to either side of the remaining three command cars. They disgorged dirty, mostly bandaged troops who fanned out professionally, expanding the safe perimeter. The troops meticulously checked each possible hiding place, even prodding suspicious patches of ground for concealed firing pits. When they encountered other enemy bodies scattered about the area—a mix of helots and huscarls—they bayoneted any that did not quite look dead enough. No head-shots, though: they were too low on ammunition to waste it on executions that a blade would accomplish just as well.
Huscarls boiled out of the deck- and turret- hatches of the other command cars, fresh worry—even panic—etched over the strain and exhaustion on their faces. Harrod hur-Mellis looked down as they clustered around the skirts of his vehicle. “Senior Intendant,” one almost cried up at him, “what are we to do? With the General killed, we—”
“Calmly, Siffur. Think for a moment: just because a vehicle bears a General’s pennant, does it guarantee there is a General inside?”
As if on cue, the Lord General Pathan Mellis rose up from the hatch beside Harrod’s.
The panic on the faces ringing them became dismay, then confusion, then relief. “General,” burbled Siffur, “you live!”
Mellis sneered down at his helot. “Of course I do, dolt. Do you think I am foolish enough to ride in a command car that advertises my presence inside?”
As the Senior Intendant of House Mellis, Harrod had much experience not letting his inner reactions alter the neutral expression on his face. This served him quite well now, as he thought: No, you are not so foolish as that—at least not after I pointed out the prudence of false-flagging our weakest vehicle. Not that Harrod would ever remind Pathan Mellis that his Lordship’s supposed masterstroke of foresight had actually originated in a lesser mind. The Evolved expected even their highest-ranking servitors to remain abjectly deferential and compliant—a life-preserving lesson forgotten by too many new Intendants. Increased interaction with their masters often led them to assume an equal increase in allowed familiarity: this was an invariably fatal error.
Pathan was already giving orders—a task at which he excelled, Harrod allowed. “Helots, remount. Security teams are to collapse back upon their own APCs. Nedd!”
The huscarl, senior among the car commanders, came stiffly to attention. “Yes, lord?”
“Your regional secure set is still working?”
“Yes, lord.”
“Get me an update. Immediately.”
“Yes, lord!”
Pathan surveyed the southern horizon; Harrod’s eyes followed those of his lord. Columns of black smoke seemed to be holding up that part of the sky.
Behind them, syncopated thunder rolled: House Mellis’s mobile artillery. A moment of silence, then high whimpering screams overhead, then silence again—and finally, flashes along the southern horizon. Two seconds later, the ragged rumbles of the barrage passed over them.
“This race is too closely run,” Pathan said in a worried tone.
Harrod knew not to say anything.
“Last week, our position was secure. But with all the neutral Houses now declaring for the HouseMoot, we are dangerously overextended. As it is, neither our forces nor those of House Shaddock can be sure of reaching our capitals in time to defend them—not when we have to fight our way back home through the forces of House Verone.”
The price of endless warmaking, and overreaching, Harrod ached to say, but did not dare to.
“Lord Mellis!” It was Nedd. His tone augured news they did not wish to hear.
“Report, huscarl.” Like all the Evolved, Pathan Mellis was always supremely cool and collected—even as he prepared to hear tidings of certain disaster.
Nedd did not disappoint their dire expectations. “Lord, our right flank, the armor of House Shaddock—”
“Destroyed?”
“No, lord. Slowing. It has fallen behind the center of our van and—”
Thunder mounted behind them once again—but the timbre and pace of the detonations was more strident, pulsed in sharp fits and starts.
Nedd—mouth still open—stopped, speechless, to stare at the sound. “My lord—battle! How could the HouseMoot forces have so quickly—?”
Pathan glanced at Harrod, who nodded, and explained to the dumbfounded huscarl. “You do not hear the attacking forces of the HouseMoot. Although it is the sound of battle, it is also the sound of treachery. House Shaddock evidently fell behind our van with a purpose; they have fallen upon our mobile artillery and our rearguard.”